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Oracle did something similar with the network protocol of its database driver. Not to prevent copying, but to prevent others from writing their own drivers: http://dacut.blogspot.de/2008/03/oracle-poetry.html



I doubt that it would work in practice. Sega tried similar thing (requiring games on Sega Genesis to print "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD.") to block interoperability, and they lost a case against Accolade.


OK, is this for real ? Does everyone have to use the Oracle OCI library under the hood ?


Definitely real. I WTF'd the first time I read that poem out of a packet capture.


LEGO tried to do the same thing with their Mindstorms SDK.




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